This copy is for your personal non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies of Toronto Star content for distribution to colleagues, clients or customers, or inquire about permissions/licensing, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com

The Art Gallery of Ontario has been on a roll for the past couple of years. These days you can feel a sense of energy and excitement in the building that was notably lacking just a few years ago, and for a long time before that.

Now we can see statistical evidence of the upsurge by considering the numbers published in the Art Newspaper’s annual worldwide survey of museum attendance.

For the 2013 calendar year, the AGO drew 852,904 visitors, as compared to just under 800,000 in 2012: a huge jump from its anemic 2011 figure (627,453).

The AGO’s performance over its 2013/14 fiscal year, which ended on March 31, was 861,991, even better than the calendar number.

Meanwhile, Toronto’s other mega-museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, took a bit of a slide, dropping below its magic million mark to 945,000 for the 2013 calendar year. (It had dropped below the million mark in 2011 but climbed back over it in 2012).

Article Continued Below

Canada’s biggest winner of 2013 was Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts. It attracted 1,015,022 visitors, becoming Canada’s only member of the million-visitors club.

Of course, that is a long way from the most popular museum in the world, the Louvre, which drew 9,334,435 visitors. Paris and London dominate the top 10 club, with three museums each. The only North American museums in the top 10 are New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Still, Canada earned three spots on the list of the world’s 100 most-attended museums, with the Montreal museum at No. 62, the ROM at 65 and the AGO at 75. Sadly, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa failed to make the list.

Historically, the ROM has mostly been well above the AGO (often close to double), but the AGO seems to be closing that gap.

Perhaps even more telling is that it was a series of strong exhibitions at the AGO, rather than one mega-show, that produced gratifying visitor numbers.

Ai Weiwei: According to What? (Aug. 17 to Oct. 27) attracted 145,407 visitors in 62 days. David Bowie Is (Sept 25 to Nov 29) was an even bigger draw, with 146, 471 visits in 58 days. And finally The Great Upheaval: Masterpieces From the Guggenheim Collection, 1910-1918 (Nov 30, 2013 to March 2, 2014) was seen by 142,360 people.

The ROM got a boost with its Ultimate Dinosaurs exhibit, which over an unusually long run of nine months attracted 359,124 visitors. (But its daily average works out to 1,345 compared to the AGO’s 2,345 for the much shorter run of Ai Weiwei.)

To declare victory, the AGO needs to continue increasing its annual attendance until it regularly gets one million annual visitors. And the ROM needs to get much closer to the 1.4 million target it set for itself before undertaking Daniel Libeskind’s hugely expensive addition.

Both the AGO and the ROM could learn a few lessons from the Montreal museum’s soaring figures, the best in its 153-year history.

Its biggest crowd-pleaser was Chihuly: Utterly Breathtaking. This array of blown-glass marvels ran from June 6 to Oct. 27, drawing 277,051 visitors, with a daily average of 2,235.

But what’s especially impressive about the Montreal museum is its record of not merely importing popular exhibits but also initiating, producing and exporting The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier and Peru: Kingdoms of the Sun and the Moon.

As a result, thousands of art lovers in Stockholm, New York and Seattle saw shows that originated in Montreal, boosting both the museum’s international reputation and its balance sheets.

The AGO should take a step forward by doing likewise.

Footnote: on a global scale, one of the biggest draws was a marvellous exhibition, Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity, which started at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, moved on to the Met in New York and Chicago’s Art Institute, and wound up in Rio. Cumulatively it was seen by 1.8 million people.

I saw it in three of its four incarnations, each different from the other. Alas, there was no Canadian venue.

More from the Toronto Star & Partners

LOADING

Copyright owned or licensed by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or distribution of this content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and/or its licensors. To order copies of Toronto Star articles, please go to: www.TorontoStarReprints.com